Speech draws diverse mix of supporters

It had the feel of a rock concert complete with tailgating, massive T-shirt sales and someone walking around dressed in a Big Bird costume.

?

POLITICS BLOG: Obama hammers home economic message in speech

?

RELATED ARTICLE: Obama rallies crowd at MU

?

Complete election coverage

And after Sen. Barack Obama strode onto center stage, it appeared by the rapt attention of the 40,000 people crowded into Carnahan Quadrangle and across Rollins Street that the presidential candidate hit all the right notes.

Afterward, many in the audience said they had waited four hours or more for a speech that lasted all of 33 minutes - and, they added, it was worth it.

"Electrifying," said Sarah Greenlee, 31, of Columbia, who plans to tell her 1-year-old daughter about the speech years from now. "Just to hear his voice and to actually know I got to see him five days before the election is amazing."

"I think he'll make a great president," said Lynda Logan, 66, of Fulton, who liked the economic message of middle-class tax cuts that Obama laid out in his speech.

The huge crowd was decidedly multigenerational and multicultural; a feeling of racial unity was notable for some.

"It's unbelievable; when you see the blacks and the whites come together, that's what gets me because it's new," said Claudene Lucas, 64, of Chillicothe, who made the two-hour drive to the rally with her 17-year-old grandson.

Some supporters who couldn't make it into the quadrangle craned their necks to see Obama from across Rollins Street.

Janet and Erik Neu dropped off their 15-year-old daughter, Leslie, a dedicated Obama volunteer, at the event at 4 p.m. and returned a couple of hours later to watch the speech from afar.

"I don't need to be in the massive crowd," said Erik Neu, a Navy veteran. "Just as long as I can hear, that's the important thing. I know what he looks like; I just want to hear him talk."

The Neus said the Obama campaign has inspired their daughter, and that has reinvigorated their own sense of political involvement. "She is just beside herself right now," said Janet Neu. "She's like, 'This is more exciting than Halloween any day.' "

"I think the voter turnout across the country is going to be at a level we haven't seen in a long, long time," Erik Neu said.

Nearby, in a Rollins Street parking lot, a clutch of Kenyan students from MU hoped to catch a glimpse of Obama, whose bid for the White House has become a national obsession in their homeland. "We definitely feel a connection with him because his father is from Kenya," said Wanjiru Mbure, 26, a graduate student studying communications who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the Kenyan flag.

"There's just about as much news about Obama on the Kenyan newspaper online as there is on CNN," she said. "There's Obama-mania going on there."

But it wasn't all rose petals for the Obama camp. Across the street at the Delta Upsilon fraternity house on Maryland Avenue, Ryan Olson and Chas Thompson watched the events from their front porch with a degree of skepticism. The two put up a large McCain sign in the corner of their yard, drawing hoots and hollers from some passers-by.

"We kind of feel like the only two Republicans on campus right now, so we put it out there not to be disrespectful but just to stir things up a little," Olson said.

The pair said the Obama campaign might be feeling overconfident right now. "The election is still up in the air - that's my main point," Thompson said, adjusting the brim of his hat. "Who knows what story is going to break in the next five days."

But some who have been on the ground volunteering are sensing a tidal change in local politics. Stacy Sells and her mother, Georgia, drove from Little Rock, Ark., this week to volunteer for Obama. They had the feeling Boone County was friendly territory before the speech and will likely be even more supportive of Obama after the visit.

"I knocked on about 100 doors, I talked to about 40 voters, and only three of them were voting for John McCain," said Stacy Sells, whose daughter is a junior at MU. "It was a good day."